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Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut doesn’t bring anything new to the cinematic table in terms of story or visual technique; what makes it exciting is her outstanding attention to detail. Having also been a Catholic high school senior in 2002, I knew I was in for something that was going to hit me where I live when I saw the image of Lady Bird’s titular protagonist(Saoirse Ronan) standing in the communion line with her arms folded over her chest. A fair amount of Lady Bird’s charm is based in nostalgia, the escapism of looking back to the past, whether part of a personal or historical timeline. Remember what it was like to have complicated feelings about Dave Matthews Band? Your first cell phone? Pretentiousness as the hallmark of a suitable boyfriend?

But nostalgia in Lady Bird isn’t a fully romanticized experience. Lady Bird breaks from the mold of movies with teenage protagonists focused on affluent, privileged families. Lady Bird’s family struggles with money, which colors most of the protagonist’s relationships. She dates Danny (Lucas Hedges) until she finds him kissing another boy; the scene where he pleads with her not to tell his parents that he’s gay is heartrending. And, relative to this blog, is Lady Bird’s larger-bodied best friend Julie (Beanie Feldstein). There’s a moment where the skinny Lady Bird casually mentions wanting to lose weight to Julie. “Really?” Julie responds, her bewilderment and self-consciousness immediately familiar to me and, I’m sure, most other fat audience members.

Lady Bird and Julie share a paradigmatic protagonist-sidekick dynamic. Lady Bird is louder and more confident; Julie is more reserved, and tends to follow her friend’s lead. Julie is also, typical of fat characters, more socially awkward than Lady Bird. Julie’s ineptitude is subtle and relatable, not clownish. She fawns over math teacher Mr. Bruno (Jake McDorman), but her crush never inflates to the point where she is a buffoon (or a victim); she is gracious when he introduces her to his pregnant wife. A sequence of characters auditioning for the school musical nicely illustrates the friends’ contrasting personalities: Lady Bird does a fiery rendition of the Barbra Streisand-popularized “Everybody Says Don’t,” while Julie opts for the gentle and out-of-place hymn “Prayer of St. Francis.” Julie, however, is cast in a substantial role in the musical while Lady Bird is relegated to the chorus. Julie also has a knack for math while Lady Bird struggles with her grades, resisting the trope of a fat character being worse at everything than their thin counterpart.

While the two girls are seemingly inseparable, Lady Bird decides in the second half of the school year that she wants to reinvent herself and ditches Julie in favor of attaching herself to rich, popular Jenna (Odeya Rush) and cool, intellectual Kyle (Timothee Chalamet). Jenna and Kyle are conventionally attractive, but also smirking and apathetic. Maintaining relationships with Jenna and Kyle means adopting a facade, a tactic completely alien to Lady Bird. Her first attempt to get Jenna’s attention is to insult Sister Sarah Joan (Lois Smith) and suggest that a revenge prank is appropriate for a routine admonishment against violating the school uniform. Julie is shocked and reminds Lady Bird that she’s fond of the nun, which Lady Bird immediately denies. Lady Bird lies to Jenna about where she lives (a switch from describing herself to Danny as being “from the wrong side of the tracks”) and takes up smoking to impress Kyle.

Of course, Lady Bird is too headstrong to accommodate her new friends for long. She is seriously disillusioned after she has sex for the first time with Kyle, assuming it his first time too, only to have him casually reveal that he’s had several partners before her and is much more casual about sex than she. The breaking point comes on the way to prom. Lady Bird reluctantly agrees with their plan to ditch prom, but bristles when “Crash Into Me” by the Dave Matthews Band comes on the radio and Kyle disparages it. There is a scene earlier in the film, after Lady Bird finds Danny cheating on her, where she and Julie are crying and singing along to “Crash Into Me.” No longer able to tolerate trying to be someone else, she tells Kyle to drive her to Julie’s home. When Jenna asks who Julie is, Lady Bird defiantly replies, “She’s my best friend.”

Part of Lady Bird’s attention to detail are the numerous loose threads that the film gives us. These aren’t plot holes, rather, accurate reflections that life rarely comes with neat conclusions, and rarely allows us to witness conclusions to struggles in which we aren’t immediately involved. We see supporting characters moving in and out of personal problems, only glimpsing their interior world long enough to see them as human beings. Kyle drops Lady Bird off at the apartment complex where Julie lives– confirming that, like Lady Bird, Julie is also an outsider at their school due to her family’s economic circumstances. Julie is revealed to be in her apartment, still in her bathrobe, crying. The audience never finds out why, we simply see Lady Bird ask for her forgiveness and convince her to come to prom. At prom, the reunited friends dance joyfully with each other and hang out until dawn, at which point Julie reveals that she is spending the summer with her dad and will be going to the local community college, while Lady Bird is moving away in the fall.

Julie (Beanie Feldstein) and Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan), prom night

The end of the film finds Lady Bird in her first days at Barnard in New York City. She seems to have synthesized her experiences over the course of the film, excited to be cool and worldly in the way that drew her to Kyle and Jenna, but also unrelentingly true to herself. At her first college party, she asserts her belief in God in a conversation with a self-assured atheist and, when asked her name, drops her self-appointed nickname and introduces herself by her given name, Christine. Even though Julie is not present in the latter portion of the movie, which focuses specifically on Lady Bird’s troubled relationship with her mother (Laurie Metcalf), there is a direct parallel between Lady Bird asserting herself as Julie’s friend to Kyle and as a theist at the party in New York. Lady Bird’s relationship with Julie is the childhood that she’s leaving behind her, but also an essential part of who she is. Even if the two go their separate ways, we know that they are both better people for having learned how to apologize and forgive. Lady Bird suggests that all its characters could easily be the protagonist of their own movie. Although Julie fits the awkward fat friend trope, we also get glimpses of her inner life, suggestions that she has also had a coming of age over the course of the film. The resonant emotional honesty and compassion of Lady Bird redeems its reliance on stock character types.

Admittedly, I haven’t been great about keeping up with the Monthly Roundup feature. I like having an overview of the fat characters I’m exposed to as part of my regular moviegoing, but something about its current format doesn’t feel quite right, and I’ve decided to shelve it until I’m more confident about what I’m doing with it. However, I’m pleased to report that in the space of one short month (admittedly not a calendar month, but still), I have seen no less than four films with kickass fat female characters. Most amazingly, I only sought out one of the four because I knew in advance that it had a fat female character; the others were complete surprises. Check these out if you’re able.

Deidre and Laney Rob a Train (2017, dir. Sydney Freeland)

It’s not uncommon for a socially awkward protagonist high school girl to have a frenemy, someone in her social circle who is overly assertive and selfish, but gets away with it because of her social capital and ability to be manipulative. (Mean Girls. If it’s not patently obvious, I’m referencing Mean Girls.) In a subplot, Laney (Rachel Crow) is strong-armed into auditioning for a beauty pageant by Claire (Brooke Markham), a Lady Macbeth-in-training who is determined to become Miss Iowa and wants Laney to make her look better by comparison. Claire is ruthless, ambitious, struts around with a cute boy on her arm, and the film never so much as comments on the fact that she’s bigger than the other girls in the competition. I don’t automatically cotton to fat female antagonists for merely existing, but considering that Claire’s threat to Laney is fueled by her confidence, social prowess, and beauty, it’s heartening that the role was given to a larger-bodied actress.

GLOW: The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (2012, dir. Brett Whitcomb)

A compelling documentary about the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, a short-lived tv phenomenon in the late 80s that helped legitimize women in the world of professional wrestling. The film basically opens with footage from the tv show of two fat women, Mountain Fiji (Emily Dole) and Matilda the Hun (Dee Booher) throwing down in the ring. Although the other GLOW members featured in the documentary are thin and conventionally good-looking, Mt. Fiji and Matilda also stand out for their dedication to their craft. The other women talk about their time with GLOW as a fun adventure they had in their youth, mostly sending them on to other careers. As Matilda the Hun, a “glamazon” heel, Booehr views wrestling as her vocation, having struggled to wrestle in male-dominated venues long before being hired by GLOW, and continuing to wrestle long after it ends. Dole, a former Olympic-level shot putter, doesn’t have a story quite as happy as the others– the present-day segments show her struggling with health problems– but her reunion with the rest of the GLOW cast shows that not only was she one of the main faces on the show, but that her castmates truly looked up to her as the heart of the phenomenon.

A scripted series based on GLOW is releasing this summer on Netflix… we’ll see if they fuck it up, I guess!

Mountain Fiji

Matilda the Hun

My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (2017, dir. Dash Shaw)

I went into the theater thinking that the title was metaphorical, and I was dead wrong. Daria meets The Poseidon Adventure, with an inventive visual style along the lines of of Belladonna of Sadness. Dash (Jason Schwartzman), our protagonist, is a self-centered sophomore who sees himself as the star journalist of the school’s newspaper. He makes several comments about his best friend Assaf (Reggie Watts) being fat, but Assaf’s character design isn’t markedly different from the other not-fat characters. Lunchlady Lorraine (Susan Sarandon), however, is drawn fatter than the other characters, and her size belies remarkable strength and ability.

Patti Cake$ (2017, dir. Geremy Jasper)

An underdog story about Patricia “Killa P” Dumbrowski (Danielle Macdonald), a young woman from a working class town in northeast New Jersey who dreams of making it as a rapper. Her best friend Jheri (Siddharth Dhananjay) encourages her to share her talent with the world, but she feels held back by a host of reasons, including her peers who deride her for her size. Fatphobia isn’t the only problem she faces, though, and she channels her feelings her body– both anger at her haters and defiant pride in herself– into her lyrics.

Deidre and Laney Rob a Train and GLOW: the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are on Netflix, My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea is currently in theaters, and Patti Cake$ is due for a wide release in July (I got to see it early thanks to the Chicago Critics Film Festival).

I’d had Heavy in mind for the Trope Deep Dive from the start, and praises be to the movie gods, it went from “it’s a nice thought but I don’t know how I’ll get my hand on it” to “holy shit it’s on Netflix” over the course of working on this series. Heavy was one of the first indie films I watched as a young person, partially due to my nascent interest in this subject and partially because it was largely filmed in the region where I grew up. The film could be described as restrained; like its protagonist, Vincent (Pruitt Taylor Vince), it’s very sparse and selective in what it has to say, focusing on a brief point in Vincent’s life where a beautiful young woman, Callie (Liv Tyler) takes a waitressing job at the restaurant he owns with his mother, Dolly (Shelly Winters). Because it is such a simple story, it can be looked at in terms of the other films I’ve discussed over the past several months, as a means of highlighting shared qualities of the other twelve films I’ve discussed so far featuring romances between fat men and thin women.

Vincent is a middle-aged, single (presumably never-married) man living and sharing a family business with his mother that she had owned with his now-deceased father. Vincent’s size is a source of insecurity which she glosses over. In one particularly memorable scene, he skips breakfast and when she asks why, he gives “I’m fat” as the reason. Her automatic response is to render his statement and the feelings behind it as invalid: “You are not fat, you are not. Honey, you’re husky. You’re well built. You’re macho.” “I am FAT, Ma,” he responds more forcefully, the only point in the film at which he confronts her. Not uncommon to fat protagonists, Vincent’s size has to Mean Something, and we discover that his fatness is symptomatic of his arrested development. Although he is characterized as a good cook, when he is at work we only see him making pizza, a food commonly associated with fatness. When Callie suggests that he has the talent to be a chef if he studied at the Culinary Institute of America, Dolly and Delores (Debbie Harry), a waitress who has been working at Pete and Dolly’s for over a decade, shut down the idea before Vincent can get a word in: “They would just charge a lot of money to teach him what he already knows.” Of course there are fat gourmet chefs, so it’s not the neatest of dichotomies, but Vincent’s body and the food he makes are fatty and pedestrian, in comparison to the finer alternative offered by Callie. Dolly also reveals that her desire to keep Victor at home making pizzas is an expression of her inability to accept her husband’s death: “when you began to… grow… it was almost like I had him back again.” Victor is in a role that keeps his family’s life in stasis as much as possible: looking like his father, taking care of his mother, and working his father’s job in the restaurant that still bears his father’s name. When Dolly dies, he shows a similar unwillingness to move on, and only tells Callie that she died once she’s in the ground. Perhaps it’s worth noting that Dolly is one of the few fat women in the films I’ve included in the trope deep dive; the only other one I can recall off the top of my head is also a mom–Kathy Bates in Angus.

Vincent (Pruitt Taylor Vince), in domestic setting.

Stagnancy or need for maturation, especially when it means reliance on family in a manner deemed socially inappropriate to an eligible bachelor, is a common starting point for fat men who are romantic leads. James in I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, Danny in Only the Lonely, and Jack in Jack Goes Boating are all grown men living with family members. Angus, Terri, and the Motelare about minors who naturally live with family, but are all in caretaking roles (Angus and Terri of sick relatives, Ernest of his family’s business) that afford them less autonomy than their peers. Dex in The Tao of Steveand Ben in Knocked Up don’t live with family of origin, but rather with a tight-knit group of friends who enable each others’ adolescent habits. Living with (and caring for) family suggests a body equipped for domesticity and comfort, the attributes that would be preferable for a long-haul relationship. Living with similarly slackerish friends suggests an adolescent indolence that requires fixing through maturity (ie. in the direction of a productive job and nuclear family).

This domesticity and/or arrested development also usually comes with another layer of outsiderness or contempt, often based on the character’s fatness. In Heavy, Vincent is held back over and over again by language based on his weight. When he tries to assert himself as restaurant manager to Dolores, he is confronted by regular Leo (Joe Grifasi) on her behalf: “Just because your mommy’s sick doesn’t mean you can shit on people, you fat fuck.” Even though Vincent makes a reasonable demand (that Dolores be more civil to Callie, her coworker), his size and closeness to his mother are easily invoked to discredit him. Even when he and Callie are able to share some alone time together, she describes him as “more to love,” trying to be congenial but ending up patronizing, especially considering that Vincent desperately wants her to return his feelings.

Status as a social outsider is common to the other fat male love interests. All four of the school-age protagonists I’ve covered (in Superbad, the Motel, Angus, and Terri) are bullied. The male love interests in Hitch, Knocked Up, Enough Said, and I Want Someone… are all coded as unattractive, at least in part due to their size. I Want Someone… even focuses on how James’ weight impacts his work as an actor, when he can’t even get an audition for the remake of Marty because former teen pop idol Aaron Carter was cast as the lead. Dex in The Tao of Steve is shown as being able to get laid despite being fat, and being unable to commit to a relationship in part due to his insecurity over his weight. The female love interests, on the other hand, are thin and conventionally beautiful. Additionally, in several cases, they have more social capital (or literal capital). In Hitch, The Tao of Steve and Knocked Up, they have more money and/or more prestigious jobs than their male counterparts; in Superbad and Angus, they are more popular at school.

Even if Callie is a waitress, ultimately she is an outsider to the world of the restaurant where Vincent feels stuck. She is taking time off from college and aspires to be a photographer, which neither Dolores nor Dolly validate. “Not everybody’s gotta go to college. Somebody’s gotta roll up their sleeves and do the work,” Dolly tells her during her interview. There is a complimentary disdain between Callie and Dolly, even if Callie tries to put a friendly face on it. Pete and Dolly’s is a temporary resting place for her while she figures things out, whereas it’s Dolly’s whole life. Suggesting that Victor would want to go to school and work in a fancier establishment is an insult to Dolly, even if taking his feelings into consideration would be a more loving response than speaking on his behalf. Callie’s separation from their world is embodied by her boyfriend Jeff (Evan Dando), a musician who refuses to step foot in the restaurant. “I guess he thinks they’re all trash or something,” Callie tells her friends. Victor finds an ambivalent place between the two, feeling separated from Callie but also wanting to expand his horizons. After his mother dies, he takes a tour of the Culinary Institute of America. His desire to free himself from stagnancy also comes in the form of trying to lose weight, a goal he starts pursuing when he sees Callie making out with Jeff. The film’s hopeful ending includes a meetcute with the cashier at the grocery where he buys weight-loss shakes.

I love how the posters have Liv Tyler’s image largest, suggesting that maybe she plays the protagonist, experiences some personal growth, reveals her inner world…? No, but she is the most normatively attractive of the main characters.

It’s not uncommon for movies with romantic narratives to include parallel self-improvement arcs for one or both of the characters falling in love. However, Vincent’s weight-loss subplot in Heavy is an example of a pattern I’ve noticed across most of the films in the trope deep dive series: a fat man improving himself to become worthy of a thin woman’s love. Heavy is similar to Superbad and Hitch, where a fat character changes himself and goes outside his comfort level to attract the attention of a thin love interest. Knocked Up, Jack Goes Boating, The Tao of Steve, and Only the Lonely all feature fat men who are able to start a relationship with a thin woman, but need to change something about themselves to prove their commitment to her. Of the remaining films: Terri and The Motel end with the male protagonists being rejected by the objects of their affections; the protagonists of I Want Someone… and Angus change for their own benefit and end up impressing their love interests as a result; and The Lobster and Enough Said engage with the aforementioned trope of men improving themselves to gain the love of women by actively criticizing it. Although Victor’s focus is on his weight (and he isn’t actually successful in changing it over the course of the movie), other films feature more significantly life-changing choices in the interest of pursuing romance, including overall life improvement (Knocked Up, Jack Goes Boating), significantly changing a relationship dynamic with a parent (Only the Lonely), and dramatically quitting a job (Hitch). This suggests that the romantic satisfaction in these films, for the female audience, is the idea of being a muse of sorts: her affection and approval are such valuable goals for him to achieve, she inspires him to become “better.” The last lines of Jack Goes Boating illustrate this idea explicitly: “I knew you’d be good.” “I am, for you.” The “for you” aspect of the sentiment connects neatly with the ideal of lifelong monogamy, where an individual person is unfulfilled without the one partner who sees them as beautiful and can unlock their hidden potential.

Being able to love a fat outsider also speaks to a certain virtuous quality in the thin women characters. It suggests a lack of elitism and an emotional integrity, the ability to see “real” beauty and find love without caving to social expectations. When Callie and Vincent are alone, she tells him that he’s “cooler than someone would think.” She’s also an aspiring photographer and finds him to be an interesting subject, bringing a lacking artistic sensibility to his world. However, this willingness to look beyond convention doesn’t extend to the female characters themselves, who are all portrayed by actors who are popularly considered beautiful and/or coded within their film as desirable to other male characters besides their fat admirers. Highlighting both the female characters’ desirability and the male characters’ capacity to care for her, often she is initially attracted to or in a relationship with a thin man who is not as good a fit for her as the fat romantic lead would be (The Tao of Steve, Hitch), doesn’t understand her the way that the fat romantic lead does (The Motel), or is an outright douchebag to her (Angus, Heavy).

Perhaps it’s an oversimplification to assume that audience members would identify with characters involved in a romantic plot based on a shared gender. Personally, I’ve frequently felt a certain alienation from these kinds of female characters in films, which I could attribute to being both fat and nonbinary, while also not fully identifying with the fat male characters who are in love with them. But to a certain extent, we watch films for the vicarious pleasure of seeing how characters react to specific circumstances; consider the post-modern horror convention of smugly outlining a survival plan for a slasher attack or zombie apocalypse. And this group of films give us an expansion of what a romantic male lead would look like, while the image of a romantic female lead is very much in its lane. (Apparently to have the sensibilities to look beyond beauty conventions, one actually has to be a female romantic lead in one of these movies.) The divide in audience identification with these respective characters seems to be “Would I be able to attract someone like her?” versus “Would I be able to look past initial judgments and see that he loves me?” Or, to put it in terms of how most of the plots play out, “I’ve won the love of a beautiful woman” versus “I’ve realized that I’m loved by a devoted man.” The way this dynamic plays out in Heavy— at least, in Vincent’s imagination– highlights its problematic nature. Vincent has a recurring daydream in which he finds Callie floating in the river, takes her home and cares for her– in every scene of the sequence, she is wet and her skin is bluish, as if she were dead. Vincent is characterized by his timidity and seeming lack of live experience, so his dream is innocent, in a sense: his affection is expressed by caregiving, never sexual activity. However, it is disturbing that the way he imagines a relationship with Callie is having her lifeless and dependent on him. But Callie has a life of her own, and the film ends with them moving in their own separate directions.

Callie (Liv Tyler) and Vincent

As opposed to the kind of romantic film that end with a woman swept off her feet by a man who is wealthier (Pride and Prejudice, Pretty Woman) or lives more deeply than she (Dirty Dancing, All That Heaven Allows), the films I’ve looked at over the past several months largely find their romantic ideal in a man who is willing to make a change for the sake of a relationship. This kind of arc isn’t exclusive to romantic stories pairing fat men with thin women (Shaun of the Dead, High Fidelity), but looking back at this series, I’m struck by the frequency with which it popped up. Even if these films present a different idea of what a male romantic lead looks like– and considering that 9 out of the 13 are indies, one would expect at least some deviation from mainstream film standards– they are still mired in sexist, heteronormative ideas of how to a romance is formulated. To be explicit: men act and women react; men strike forth to earn what they desire, women wait passively (or unknowingly) for their emotions to be stirred. This dynamic also does a disservice to its presumably subversive male lead. The journey of self-improvement, even if it doesn’t include weight loss, implies that he has to prove his worthiness. It functions as a compensation, gives her a reason to fall in love with him. Even in Angus and I Want Someone…, where the male protagonists respectively make decisions to face a fear and move out of mom’s house for their own good, their love interests start to return their feelings as an outcome. The only film that is a true exception to this dynamic is Enough Said, in which Eva tries to get Albert to change his ways, only to have it blow up in her face and realize that having a flawed Albert in her life is better than no Albert at all. It’s probably not a coincidence that Enough Said is the only film of this series with a female protagonist. Even though a fair number of these films don’t explicitly make the male romantic interest’s weight a potential reason that he wouldn’t be seen as a viable partner, the need to “be good” in order to win her love, paired with being fat, is enough to keep these stories at least partly mired in the typical idea that a fat person can’t be “good” enough to be a mate.

I like to present myself as a savvy, even cynical, consumer of media, so it’s a little embarrassing for me to admit my predilection for romantic movies. After participating in the recent #fav7films on Twitter, 3 of my 7 turned out to focus on romantic relationships (4 of 10, if I include my extended list). Look at this current series of articles! A big part of this has to do with the escapist aspect of entertainment, which romantic movies have in spades by their nature. They focus on the segments of relationships where people are acting their best, hormones at their strongest. Even more grounded romantic films like Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy involves relatively privileged people in idyllic settings; Before Sunset, the second installment (and my favorite), takes place in Paris, in real time, during the magic hour. Of course, the characters who fall in love with each other are also idealized: they’re usually affluent (if one is poor, the other is wealthy), occupied with interesting jobs or aspirations, barely concealing beautiful inner lives just waiting to be shared, good-hearted, charming, and physically attractive. Even an average Joe who finds themself as the romantic lead will usually have an iconic speech in their back pocket. And, as I hope I’ve managed to convey in earlier posts, fat characters are almost always positioned as a detracting trait, counter to a happily-ever-after image. There’s usually some form of compensation, some element that seems to say, “Okay, I know what you’re thinking, but this fat person deserves a chance.” This can be Albert and Eva’s extraordinary chemistry (which, to be fair, is a solid example of a romantic film lacking idealization if you want to argue against my thesis), Jack’s and Marty’s pure-heartedness, Angus’ exceptional integrity/athleticism/intellect, or even Danny’s near-supernatural ability to call in a favor (erotic cronyism: only in Chicago). Before this series we even have Louis in True Stories, who finds a bride through a love spell. However, we also have narratives like Hitch and The Tao of Steve, which don’t make exceptions for their fat characters through exceptional character traits, and rather focus on the implementation of romantic strategies to explain why a fat/unattractive man could successfully woo a thin/attractive woman.

The narratives of these films are based on some assumptions that are misguided at best. First, we have the homogenization of attraction: it’s not possible that a fat character would be seen as attractive because there are objective, universal standards that are embedded deep in the hearts and minds of the other characters, and of course, the audience. One of the reasons I started writing CPBS was, in addition to being fat myself, I’m attracted to other fat people, so I get very lost during scenes where it’s supposed to be hilariously icky that Jack Black is naked. (On top of, you know, the alienation when reminded that the entertainment industry uses bodies like mine as visual shorthand for garbage.) Second, both Hitch and The Tao of Steve rely on the regressive heteronormative positioning of man as active pursuer of passive trophy woman, who has the “real” power of being able to veto the relationship. It needs to be said that the overlap of these assumptions function to completely cut fat women out of the picture. The Tao of Steve goes so far as to have protagonist Dex (Donal Logue) declare that he doesn’t fuck fat women. “I am a fat-ist, I admit it. I’m the worst kind of fat-ist, I’m a fat fat-ist.” What a delightful character I resigned myself to spend another hour watching! Considering how this statement occurs early in the film, I suppose it’s supposed to communicate the immaturity that Dex grows out of to win the love of Syd (Greer Goodman), who is coincidentally thin. Yet, since no fat women exist in the film, there’s nobody on the receiving end of this statement, just the abstract phantom of an unfuckable fat woman. Hitch doesn’t even acknowledge that fat women exist. We often think of fat women existing in rom coms as the Less Attractive Best Friend; Casey (Julie Ann Emery) is thin and pretty, her apparent outsider status is due to being Southern (Hitch being of the subgenre of rom coms that take place in Manhattan). Wealthy, beautiful Allegra (Amber Valletta), the object of Albert’s (Kevin James) affections, turns out to be clumsy and awkward, but these traits are only highlighted at the end of the film when she talks about them while sitting on her gigantic yacht. Her transgressions from physical idealization are manifest on her body during the end credits wedding dance party sequence, once the “chase” is over. The object of longing is characterized by physical restraint– thinness, gracefulness, aloofness– which is as true for the mandatorily thin women characters as it is for the fat male characters pursuing them. As Dex says in The Tao of Steve: “we pursue that which retreats from us.” For Dex and Albert, restraint is the foundation of their respective strategies for getting women interested in them. Of course, both learn the art of seduction from thin, traditionally attractive men.

In Hitch, stereotypical accountant Albert hires Hitch (Will Smith), the “date doctor,” to teach him how to get his heiress client Allegra to notice him. Hitch’s philosophy of falling in love comes from a painful experience he had in college of his first girlfriend (Robinne Lee) leaving him because he came on too strong, a heartbreak that was apparently potent enough to transform Charmingly Dorky Will Smith into Charmingly Suave Will Smith. His philosophy does not include outright lying– he tells us in the opening narration that women want to see “the real you”– but he does say that “with no guile and no game, there’s no girl.” He isn’t above manipulating situations, creating meetcutes for his clients. Hitch teaches Albert how to dress and groom himself, but more importantly, how to rein in his dorkiness, which largely manifests as flailing physical comedy bits. Albert is confident that his flamboyant dance moves will impress Allegra, but Hitch orders him to keep it to a dull two-step. Albert can’t maintain control during their date, however, and busts out his ridiculous moves when Allegra isn’t looking at him, his physical tendency towards excess irresistable, even leading him to cheat on his regimen of increased regulation. Hitch too ends up having to deal with his own body betraying him in appropriate ways when on dates with Sara, as he ends up accidentally knocking her into the Hudson River and having an allergic reaction that causes his face to swell up. While mirroring his fat client’s awkwardness, Hitch also mirrors his emotional sincerity, as he struggles with wanting to get more involved with Sara than is his usual comfort level.

If the audience wasn’t already socially conditioned to view fat people as unworthy of love or desire, the opening sequence of The Tao of Steve makes this explicit, as three women Dex went to college with view his body with amused disgust and confess to each other that they all had sex with him back in the day. Albert may be above average in optimism thinking he can win the heart of a millionaire, but Dex is damn near a curiosity. Step up ladies and gents, marvel at the fat man who gets laid on a regular basis! How does he do it? Witty, intellectual Dex has hewn his seduction strategy from observing “the prototypical cool American male” in pop culture, specifically Steve McGarrett, Steve Austin, and Steve McQueen. “He never, ever tries to impress women but he always gets the girl.” The Tao of Steve is Dex’s name for his three-part strategy for getting women to have sex with him: “eliminate your desire… be excellent in her presence.., retreat.” While Dex’s strategy appears to be based on respecting boundaries (wow), sharing interests (amazing), and socializing with women without any expectations of sex (gold star), his reasoning is pretty damn misogynist. Dex says that, based on his looks, “technically [he] shouldn’t be getting laid” and thus women are confused and intrigued by his apparent lack of sexual interest in them, which causes them to assume that sleeping with him is a major achievement on their part, wherein reality he describes himself as being willing to have sex with any woman who has low enough standards (as long as she isn’t fat). He justifies the Tao not working on Syd because she’s smarter than the women he usually is able to seduce. However, the sex that he has is also largely meaningless as he doesn’t desire a connection beyond temporary pleasure with his sexual partners.

Although initially acting under the belief that behaving in a stereotypically masculine way will attract the women they’re in love with, both Albert and Dex have to abandon this facade and be more sensitive and vulnerable to actually win Allegra’s and Syd’s hearts. These traits are often associated with fat men as a way of showing their lack of masculinity, but here we have two very straight rom-coms where romancing a woman is successfully done by letting go of machismo. In Hitch, Albert is contrasted with the thin male characters as the genuinely nice guy. Hitch isn’t bad person, but he’s a player, emotionally distant and commitment-phobic. Allegra’s ex-boyfriend, the prince of Sweden or something like that, is referred to in negative terms. We’re also introduced to Vance (Jeffrey “Burn Notice” Donovan), a potential client who wants Hitch to teach him seduction skills in order to dump a woman after a one night stand. Hitch thinks Albert is a lost cause and is only persuaded to take on his case when Albert reveals the selfless nature of his love: “You know what it’s like getting up every day, feeling hopeless? Feeling like the love of your life is waking up with the wrong man, but at the same time hoping that she finds happiness, even if it’s never gonna be with you?” And sure, Hitch helps Albert gain confidence and talk to Allegra in the first place, but his genuine attributes win out in the end. As mentioned before, Allegra reveals that she is attracted to Albert’s awkward, dorky ways because she sees those traits in herself and he makes her feel comfortable.

As for Dex, being an unattached lothario comes much more naturally to him, but he’s only able to win Syd’s affections once he stops verbally sparring with her and allows himself to be vulnerable. Casual sex with many different partners is Dex’s MO, but he feels genuine remorse when Syd reveals that he seduced her in college and is hurt that he doesn’t remember her. He directly uses his fat body as evidence that he won’t hurt her again: “Now I’m a fat fucking pig, and the guy that did that to you was a skinny, arrogant prick. Just give me one more chance.” The logic behind this statement isn’t teased out, but it suggests that becoming fat has taught Dex something about humility. From his actions over the course of the film, it seems more like he looks for temporary solace from the insecurity he feels over the changes in his body by seeking casual sex and hasn’t actually changed, especially considering that he lies to his date in order to blow her off and have this conversation with Syd. She doesn’t buy it; however, he does keep making attempts to be a better person in order to win her affections. As a means of apologizing, he repairs a motorcycle for her. Where he was initially depending on Syd to drive him to and from work, his gift frees her from her obligation to him. (Dex is constantly referencing philosophers and religious thinkers throughout the film. When Syd shows up at his home to thank him for the motorcycle, he’s reading The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels, a book that serves as the modern world’s reintroduction to Gnosticism, an early sect of Christianity that contradicted the patriarchal structures of Roman Catholicism by having gender-equitable roles within their organization and recognizing the feminine personhood of God. Filmmaking!) His striving to change himself continues as he goes camping with Syd and some friends despite his lack of outdoorsmanship, makes an attempt at dieting, and breaks up with the married woman he’d been sleeping with (Ayelet Kaznelson). Getting punched out by his former lover’s husband (John Hines) is enough, and he and Syd have their second first kiss. Even during sex with her, he drops the playboy facade and shows vulnerability and tenderness. Unfortunately, that takes the form of being insecure about his body, as he requests that they turn the lights off.

Dex (Donal Logue) and Syd (Greer Goodman) in The Tao of Steve: Maybe you can’t stand him now, but just wait until the third act…

Both Hitch and The Tao of Steve find romance in a man changing himself to prove himself worthy of a woman: Albert sheds his timidity, Dex his aloofness. Their respective strategies even work at first: Syd warms up to Dex when she sees him “be excellent” with his kindergarten students, Albert gets Allegra to notice him when he stands up to his patronizing boss on her behalf. But the real connections don’t form until they rid themselves of the structured restrain they had been relying on as seduction methods; one might say that they let themselves go. And even though Dex and Albert embody fat stereotypes (slovenly nerd and slovenly stoner, respectively) that are usually positioned as worthy of ridicule, the films want us to root for and empathize with them. They are posited as diamonds in the rough, willing to polish themselves for the women they love, suggesting that they would do anything to make Syd and Allegra happy. The idea that Albert and Dex as fat men can be seen as viable partners is initially explained by their employing of seduction strategies, “tricking” their respective partners into finding them attractive. The romance doesn’t come from them being conventionally attractive as much as it does them being improved by the grace of loving these women who passively wait to be seduced. As with the dynamic we see in Superbad and Knocked Up, the female characters serve as inspiration for the male characters to grow as people. The escapist element is the idea of a partner who will facilitate your self-improvement (if you’re a dude), or who will change themselves to impress you (if you’re a lady). It’s the internal version of a makeover or training montage done for the sake of impressing a partner, not the basis for a healthy relationship. I said in a previous article that I want to see fat characters involved in escapist, whirlwind romances, but not if there isn’t a happy medium between the fantasy of a budding romance and tropes that aren’t bad ideas in the real world.

My intention with this series of posts about romantic storylines featuring fat men and thin women was to choose films using a specific parameter: fat men and thin women who start a relationship during the course of the film and are still together when it ends. This time around, that ended up being more of a hindrance than help. I wanted to focus on adolescent characters, so I watched three films with fat male protagonists and plot summaries that suggested romance– Angus, The Motel* and Terri. None of the three ended with the hero happily coupled with the object of his affections; The Motel and Terri end in explicit rejection. This surprised me. Certainly not all coming of age films focus on romance, or even use beginning a relationship to signify maturation. Neither film I watched last summer with fat boy protagonists, Chubby and Heavyweights, had romantic storylines for their protagonists, though I suspect that’s more to do with the protagonists being closer to childhood than young adulthood. I wanted stories of fat characters learning to believe in themselves to include at least some subversion of the assumption that they wouldn’t be able to find willing romantic partners. But as I have a prolific once-per-month posting average to maintain, plus these films have some interesting similarities and center fat characters more than most, I figure they’re worth talking about.

As is required by the genre, all three young protagonists need to learn important life lessons in order to confront or transcend the difficult situations they find themselves in at the beginnings of their respective stories. All three are outsiders. Terri (Jacob Wysocki) and Angus(Charlie Talbert) are bullied and unpopular explicitly because they are fat. This isn’t as much the case for The Motel’s Ernest (Jeffrey Chyau), although he is not shown at his school nearly as much as the other two boys. He is nonetheless othered due to his ethnicity and class status, as part of a Chinese-American family who eke out a living running a cheap motel. It’s worth noting that all three have nontraditional family structures. In addition to the dynamic of the family business and having a home culture that’s markedly different from that of the society around him, Ernest’s father abandoned their family. Angus’ father died soon after Angus was born; his family consists of his tough-as-nails trucker mom (Kathy Bates) and his tough-as-nails grandfather (George C. Scott). (Worth noting: in the short story that Angus is based on, “A Brief Moment in the Life of Angus Bethune,” his mother and father are both gay and remarried to stepparents of the same gender. Moviegoing America apparently wasn’t ready for that particular configuration of loving but alternatively-structured family in the mid 90s.) Both of Terri’s parents are MIA; his only family member is an uncle (Creed Bratton) who has an unnamed illness. As part of their atypical families, the boys all must take on atypical roles for teenage boys. Terri and Angus act as caretakers for their elder male relatives, while Ernest works housekeeping duty at the motel. Not only are these roles feminized and serve to detract from any hope they have of conforming to romantic male lead standards as much as being fat does, but also detract from the amount of time they have to spend with their peers (and therefore mean fewer opportunities to meet and interact with girls).

Angus also features an interesting story beat around othering and feminization in terms of clothing. Fat bodies in movies (and also in, you know, society) vacillate between invisible/excluded and hypervisible/spectacle. When Angus is elected king of the Winter Ball as a prank, he is suddenly recategorized, going from having his achievements on the football field ignored to facing having to dance with his long-time crush in front of the whole school. The intent/expectation that he will suffer humiliation is compounded when he has to rent a tuxedo, but despite protests that he wants a “socially acceptable” black tuxedo, his only option is purple. But what seems like a cruel parody of the role he is supposed to embody becomes a symbol of his defiance, a dare for people to accept him instead of an invitation to mock him. Terri and Ernest both have specific clothing, but it reinforces their invisibility. Terri wears pajamas 24/7 (which I took as a symptom of depression), but nobody notices or asks except when his assistant principal makes him a special project. Ernest tends to wear t-shirts that are garish, especially when compared to his mild personality; without saying anything, it’s obvious that they were purchased from a thrift store.

The combination of social isolation and difficult personal life also make the protagonists’ relationship with an older male figure important to their maturation. Terri has a tenuous relationship with Mr. Fitzgerald (John C. Reilly), the assistant principal who can act thoughtlessly at times, but also models the self-confidence and tenacity that Terri lacks, opening up to the depressed student before he himself is willing to open up. Angus has Grandpa, whose motto is “screw ‘em.” He is marrying a woman thirty years younger than him; his stubborn refusal to let others’ judgments sway his decisions and his ability to woo a beautiful woman despite being old and fat both inspire Angus and foreshadow his success with the girl he has a crush on. Ernest’s grandfather (Stephen Chen) takes a very hands-off approach to parenting (but does pick on his weight). Luckily for Ernest, he is the main character in an indie dramedy and is therefore destined to cross paths with an eccentric loose cannon who brings some fun and freedom into his seemingly hopeless life, Sam (Sung Kang). Sam tries to be a surrogate father figure, teaching him how to drive and trying to convince him to stand up for himself. However, Sam is also more toxic than Grandpa or Mr. Fitzgerald, as a self-destructive divorcee who manipulates Ernest into letting him stay at the motel without paying.

In addition to older male characters who teach the protagonists how to navigate being an outsider, the love interest characters are also outsiders in their own rights. Despite being a popular cheerleader, Melissa (Ariana Richards) is as much a victim of bullying as Angus, as her boyfriend Rick (James Van Der Beek) uses her as a pawn to try and humiliate our hero. During the climactic scene at the school Winter Ball dance, she admits to Angus that not only is she as nervous as he is about being publicly humiliated, but she is also bulimic, something she had never told anyone else. “Do you ever get tired of who you are?” she asks him. “Do you know who you’re talking to?” he responds. Terri has a crush on Heather (Olivia Crocicchia), who becomes a social outcast when a classmate fingers her in class. This is partly Terri’s fault: his outsider status allows him moments of quiet observation where he sees the otherwise surreptitious sex act, his other classmates then see what he’s looking at and make a scene. He does, however, attempt to make things right by defending her to Mr. Fitzgerald, who wants to expel her, and detracting unwanted attention from her in subsequent classes. His support builds their friendship and gives him a shot with her when she suggests they hang out together after school. Despite being conventionally attractive, in contrast to the protagonists, Heather and Melissa both have bodies that require regulation, Heather through slut-shaming and Melissa through an eating disorder. In this way, they find empathy and companionship through the boys who are social pariahs for their own unruly bodies. In The Motel, however, similarity is a problem. Christine (Samantha Futerman), like Ernest, is part of a Chinese immigrant family and has an atypical childhood for an American kid, working at her family’s business. Unlike the other two films, their similar outsider status may be what prevents any potential romance. When giving Ernest advice on romance, Sam tells him that Christine won’t want him because he reminds her of her upbringing, and she wants a boyfriend who will offer her escape.

Ernest (Jeffrey Chyau) and Christine (Samatha Futerman), finding relief from their jobs together

Perhaps because of empathy gained from being an outsider, or because of the feminized roles they play in their family lives, the protagonists treat the girls with more respect than do their male peers. (Given that there is no culmination in romance, especially for Ernest and Terri, The Motel and Terri risk a “nice guy” dynamic.) While Terri protects Heather and respects her boundaries, his friend Chad plans to get her drunk and have sex with her because he thinks she’s an easy target due to her reputation. As mentioned above, Rick uses Melissa in a plan to humiliate Angus without her consent, then gets mad at her when she teaches Angus how to dance instead of allowing him to fail. Ernest stands by while three classmates of Christine’s trespass on her family’s property to skate and try to get her to give them free food. She hesitantly agrees, uncomfortable with the idea but longing for their approval. Even outside a romantic context, there is a tacit trust and intimacy between each pair that the female characters lack in other interactions with male peers.

Angus is the only film of the three that ends with ambiguous potential for romance. Notably, Angus is also the most idealized protagonist. He makes a lot of self-deprecating comments about being fat, but he is on the football team, being considered for a prestigious magnet school, and is able to stand up for himself. He is able to physically overpower Rick, but can’t because he faces suspension. His character growth is about replacing his fists with words, naturally culminating in a speech that is the best moment in the film. The last scene of the film is Melissa giving him a kiss on the cheek after he walks her home. What’s to come of this we don’t know, but in all fairness, she did just get royally screwed over by her jerk boyfriend. Some time to herself would be healthy. Both Heather and Christine also deal with external circumstances that affect any desire for romance with Terri or Ernest, fatness not ever being an explicit factor. Heather’s classmates have ostracized her due to being sexually active. Terri has a chance to have sex with her (he doesn’t) because she is drunk. She leaves a note for Terri asking that he not talk about the incident at school and emphasizing that she is his friend. And in The Motel, as previously noted, Christine’s lack of attraction for Ernest may be due to associating romance with escape from her family life.

Although none of the films end happily with romance, they do end on hopeful notes as we see signs of maturation in the protagonists. Ultimately, the resolution has more to do with their relationships with their older male role models than their female love interests. Angus, as previously noted, learns to solve his problems with dramatic speeches instead of violence and discovers that idealized Melissa is a vulnerable human being, because he takes Grandpa’s advice to “screw ‘em” (repeated to him by Melissa) and does what he wants despite potentially being judged by others. “I’d had my moment,” he tells the audience in the ending narration, “and then I heard my grandfather’s voice say to me, ‘Go have another.’” After being rejected by Heather, Terri spends a day with Mr. Fitzgerald, not only for his own benefit but also to give the older man company, as he is separating from his wife and sleeping in his car on school grounds. “She’s embarrassed,” he tells Mr. Fitzgerald. “I’m not going to say anything if that’s what she’s worried about… I don’t think I’m read for all that stuff yet, anyway.” “Who is, you know?” Mr. Fitzgerald responds. The last shot is of Terri walking through the woods by himself, looking content. The Motel’s climax sees Ernest confronting Sam, refusing to be manipulated and telling Sam that he has to leave the motel if he isn’t going to pay for his room. Instead of having to passively accept that his father left him, he is able to actively reject a dad-analogue figure for not treating him with respect. The boys all learn to value themselves despite the fatphobic (and in Ernest’s case, racist) rhetoric thrown at them; even if the expectation that a fat boy would fail at a romantic endeavor isn’t necessarily subverted, the expectation that a fat boy would fail to love himself is unquestionably skewered by all three films.

*If discussion about The Motel seems less detailed than the other two films, it’s because it was the first of the three I watched, and I lost my notes. It’s definitely worth watching, though.

A monthly rundown of the fat characters in films I saw this past month, but haven’t written articles about.

The Conjuring (2013, dir. James Wan)

Based on a true story, a family seeks the help of America’s foremost ghost-hunting couple when they discover their house is– spoiler alert– haunted. One of the ghosts is a little boy who befriends the youngest daughter in the family, it is discovered that his mother was possessed by an evil presence and murdered him. Clairvoyant Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) has a vision of the boy’s mother, a fat woman, holding his corpse.

Inside Man (2006, dir. Spike Lee)

This intricate and engaging police procedural/bank heist/hostage situation movie has the enormous, diverse cast befitting a story that takes place in NYC. My eye was caught by Ashlie Atkinson, a fat character actress I like, as Mobile Command Officer Berk. She was smart and professional, and fit in well with the rest of her team.

Best in Show (2000, dir. Christopher Guest)

One of my all-time favorite comedies. Everyone in the cast is an idiot in their own special way, among them Harlan’s friend (Will Sasso), who can’t seem to wrap his mind around the fact that Harlan (Christopher Guest) and his bloodhound Hubert aren’t doing any fishing at the dog show.

The Seventh Seal (1957, dir. Ingmar Bergman)

This classic film looks at the range of human reactions when faced with the prospect of our own mortality, especially in times of crisis like the Black Plague. Most famous, of course, is the knight Antonious Block (Max von Sydow) playing chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot) to buy himself some time. A scene in an inn features a fat merchant (Benkt-Åke Benktsson)sitting with some friends, who conclude that the best way to confront the idea that they’re living in the end times is to “eat, drink, and be merry.”

A summary of fat characters in films I saw over the last month but didn’t write about.

Take This Waltz (2011, dir. Sarah Polley)

This romantic drama follows Margot (Michelle Williams), a writer who finds herself torn between her loving, stable marriage to chef Lou (Seth Rogen) and her prickly, burgeoning crush on their rickshaw-driving artist neighbor, Daniel (Luke Kirby). I was hesitant to include this because Rogen is thinner in this film than most of his work (he made this film around the same time as Green Hornet), but I decided to go with it as the film juxtaposes him with Daniel, who is very athletic (literally spending his days running around Toronto).

Orgazmo (1997, dir. Trey Parker)

A self-consciously B comedy that is a sendup of low-budget action films, the porn industry, and (of course) Mormons, Orgazmo pits kung fu fighting Latter Day Saint Joe (Parker) against evil porn producer Maxxx Orbison (Michael Dean Jacobs). Maxxx is fat, as are some of his cronies/actors Jizzmaster Zero (Ron Jeremy) and his dimwitted bodyguard whose name I didn’t write down (mea culpa, unsung hero). But another notable scene pairs Joe with a fat porn actress called T-Rex (Ruby Hart, credited on IMDB as “The Fat Lady Stripper”), and touches on a number of tropes: the ground shakes when T-Rex approaches, she is masculinized (her lines are dubbed with Parker doing a voiceover), she is crass and sexually voracious, Joe is terrified of her, and the onlookers are disgusted, with the exception of weirdo Dave the Lighting Guy (Matt Stone). The scene can be found here (NSFW; typical Parker/Stone humor).

The Ladykillers (2004, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)

A remake of a 1955 heist film that pits a group of thieves against an elderly Christian woman (Irma P. Hall) who unknowingly rents a room in her house to their grandiloquent ringleader (Tom Hanks). In true Coen fashion, the film is peppered with idiosyncratic fat characters: a sweaty, easily-bribed boss (Stephen Root); a security guard who is constantly laughing and surrounded by food wrappers (Walter K. Jordan); a deputy sheriff who frequently naps at his desk (John McConnell).

The Incredibles (2004, dir. Brad Bird)

One of Pixar’s best, in a world… where superheroes are forced into hiding as normal people, Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) struggles to ignore his and his family’s special abilities. Having to live as insurance agent Bob Parr, he gains weight and is referred to as fat at least a few times, but is still able to fight well enough to defeat a massive killbot single-handed. Once he has the opportunity to put his super-strength to use again, an exercise montage helps him get back his trimmer physique.

I usually don’t include fat people in documentaries that I see; in most cases, a subject being fat is happenstance. That is the case here– a profile of Louise and Martine Fokken, Dutch twin sisters who were sex workers in Amsterdam’s red light district for over 50 years, and just happen to be fat (although photos show that they were slimmer in their youth). Although fatness isn’t explicitly discussed, they are contrasted with their slimmer, younger colleagues and laughed at by some passerby. The idea of older, fatter women being sexually active, as well as objects of desire, is unthinkable to many people; making it the subject of a full-length documentary is a necessary subversion of assumptions about who sex workers are.

Happy New Year! This past month was largely focused on catching up with 2015 releases for my end of year list. (Minus the first week of January grace period I’m affording myself on account of not having the time for and access to 2015 releases that a full-time professional film writer would, you’ll just have to wait a month for those.)

Mistress America (2015, dir. Noah Baumbach)

Tracy (Lola Kirke), a college freshman and aspiring writer who is new to NYC, attempts to navigate her new surroundings by reaching out to her hipster-by-Auntie-Mame stepsister-to-be, Brooke (Greta Gerwig). One of the funniest films I’ve seen this year, due to the clever script and just-madcap-enough characters who bounce off each other delightfully. Not least among these is Brooke’s former fiancee Dylan (Michael Chernus), a fat guy who lives in the affluent suburbs of southwest Connecticut and almost matches Brooke in terms of grandiloquence and fear of adulthood.

People, Places, Things (2015, James C. Strouse)

An indie dramedy that is pretty unremarkable, with the exception of Jermaine Clement’s performance. Following the breakup between Will (Clement) and Charlie (Stephanie Allynne) that begins with Will walking in on Charlie having sex with Gary (apparent supporting role powerhouse Michael Chernus). Part of Will’s inability to move on over the course of the film deals with resentment towards Gary. Despite both men being nerdy hipster Brooklynites, larger Gary is portrayed as the more milquetoast of the two. Will is a graphic novelist, an art form that is characterized as under-appreciated and misunderstood, while Gary is a monologist, whose artistic pursuit exists in the film as material for insults. Another fat character is an unnamed student in Will’s graphic novel class, who does a piece for class about how he learned to masturbate. His work is used as a punchline– how inappropriate! like the rest of Will’s class, save Kat (Jessica Williams), this kid doesn’t get it!– but the joke comes across as misinformed. It doesn’t take much scratching of the surface of establish underground comics to find confrontationally personalautobiographical accounts.

It’s more likely to see fat characters in films that strive for realism, like Spotlight. However, as Spotlight has a large cast, fast-paced, complex plot, and required quite a bit of emotional processing as someone who was raised Catholic, I’m sure that I wouldn’t be able to remember everyone. Certainly none of the main characters are fat. There are fat characters, but the only one who comes to mind at this point is a reporter from a rival newspaper with whom Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) trades snarky comments during his trip to Springfield.

Star Wars: the Force Awakens (2015, JJ Abrams)

Larger bodied characters tend to be aliens in small roles who are sketchy/dangerous or whose bodies are part of the exotic, otherworldly scenery, such as the hulking junk trader on Jakku (Simon Pegg) to whom Rey sells her scavenged findings, or wide, intimidating-looking aliens in Maz Kanata’s (Lupita N’yongo) hideout. In addition to them, however, there is a rather dashing X-Wing pilot for the Resistance:

Sci-fi/action/comedy about a group of inner-city London youth who fight monstrous invading aliens. It’s a really smart depiction of a disaster where the only people who are working to contain the problem are the people who nobody trusts or listens to. Frequently compared to Edgar Wright’s work, it unfortunately never manages to hit the humor or emotional notes that Wright can. Case in point: Nick Frost’s role as Ron, a weed dealer. Where the Cornetto Trilogy has Frost in dynamic, funny, endearing roles, Ron isn’t given much of anything to do in Attack the Block. Shame.

Buzzard (2015, dir. Joel Potrykus)

Grungy, uncomfortable (in a good way) indie comedy about Marty (Josh Burges), a slacker who lives to game the system. One of his cons includes “returning” stolen office supplies to a retail store for cash, which he is able to do through the grace of a fat cashier (Michael Cunningham) who takes a lax approach to store policy.

Experimenter (2015, dir. Michael Almeyreda)

A fourth-wall demolishing, imagined memoir of the work of experimental psychologist Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard, in my favorite leading man performance of 2015), starting with and always coming back to his controversial 1961 experiment on subjects’ willingness to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to another person. Jim Gaffigan, whose standup includes bits on being fat, plays James McDonough, a man Milgram hired to be the “victim” of the experiment’s situation, pretending to receive the administered shocks and begging for the experiment to stop. When not acting as a man in distress, McDonough is an affable goof. 65% of the experiment subjects complied with all orders to shock McDonough, despite hearing him say that he had a heart condition and even after he became unresponsive. Most of the depictions of subject experiments show these compliant people, but two depictions are of subjects who refused to comply, including a fat man who tells the researcher saying he has no choice: “In Russia, maybe, but this is America!”

A rundown of fat characters in films I saw over the past month, but didn’t post about.

Stranger by the Lake (2014, dir. Alain Guiraudie)

A French thriller set at a remote cruising spot, following Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), who witnesses his favorite hookup Michel (Christophe Paou) committing murder. Almost all of the characters in the film are men who have sex with men. They are also mostly young and fit, with the exception of Henri ( Patrick D’Assumçao), a middle aged man with a beer belly who sits by himself and says that he is never propositioned for sex. Only Franck approaches him for conversation, and their relationship remains platonic.

Vanya on 42nd Street (1994, dir. Louis Malle)

This incredible film documents a group of actors who gather in an abandoned Manhattan theater for informal rehearsals of Anton Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya, under the direction of Andre Gregory. Jerry Mayer plays Waffles, a sycophantic and persistently cheerful tenant of patriarch Serybryakov (George Gaynes).

Jurassic World (2015, dir. Colin Trevorrow)

I noticed two fat characters before Blu Ray took pity on us and malfunctioned. Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio), who Doesn’t Understand the Dinosaurs, serves as a foil to Owen (Chris Pratt), who Understands the Dinosaurs. His goal is to weaponize the raptors for military use. When the Indominus rex breaks free of its enclosure, one of its first victims is a fat security guard, who is monitoring the enclosure but fails to notice that there is a problem. His death is somewhat reminiscent of Gennaro’s in the first film: paralyzed with fear and hiding behind a Jeep, he remains motionless while the dinosaur destroys his cover and devours him.

Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight), a fat character from Jurassic Park. Also, a representation of what watching Jurassic World feels like.

ThanksKilling (2008, dir. Jordan Downey)

A low-budget horror comedy about a group of college kids terrorized by a cursed turkey over Thanksgiving break. Billy (Aaron Carlson) is the group’s fool, to borrow a term from The Cabin in the Woods. He is a loose cannon redneck who makes more inappropriate comments than the other characters (with the exception of the Turkey). He is introduced ripping his undershirt over his excitement for Thanksgiving break, to which Johnny the jock comments that he doesn’t want to see his “tits.” Billy is the one who suggests that the group gets drunk in the woods after their car breaks down, and a research montage later in the film includes a shot of nerd Darren teaching Billy how to read. Billy dies when Turkey tricks him into swallowing him, then bursting out of his guts.

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2015, dir. Roy Andersson)

This film is a loosely connected series of static-shot vignettes that comment on mortality, morality, and human nature. An opening sequence, “Three Brushes with Death,” feature two fat men who drop dead. One dies in a ferry cafeteria; a second fat man takes his beer when the cashier points out that it’s been paid for and is up for grabs. A fat dance instructor (Lotti Tornros) is inappropriately physical with a slender, younger male student (Oscar Salomonsson), running her hands over his body under the pretense of correcting his posture. In a later scene, they are in the background having an intense conversation; he leaves her sitting at a restaurant table as she sobs inconsolably. Another scene features a fat woman playing with a baby in a carriage. Yet another is of a fat woman working in a laboratory, chatting on her cellphone while a confined monkey is tortured. There is no narrative to speak of, but the most prominent characters are a pair of travelling novelty item salesman who are unsuccessful at their trade. One of the salesman, Jonathan (Holger Andersson) is fat. He is the more serious of the two and apparently the one in charge, describing his coworker as a “crybaby” and generally taking charge during their sales pitches.

In ongoing AV Club feature Scenic Routes, Mike D’Angelo analyzes the importance of specific film scenes. His most recent article, he makes an argument for High Fidelity as Jack Black’s star-making vehicle, specifically his character Barry’s introduction to the film.

High Fidelity was my favorite film in late high school/early college. These days, the shittier aspects of Rob’s (John Cusack) personality are more glaring and the endless ending is harder to tolerate, but I still have a great affection for it. (Especially now that I live in Chicago! I’ve been to the intersection of Milwaukee and Honore! [It’s super gentrified!] I read the Reader!) Jack Black’s performance remains one of the film’s strongest aspects, and my affection for him as an actor has the same staying power that the film does, even though my film snobbery prevents me from seeing a fair chunk of his oeuvre. I can’t get enough of his boundless energy and masterful ability to put some stank on a scene. His work in Bernie is probably my favorite because those impulses are reined in enough to convincingly portray someone as gentle as Bernie Tiede, but emerge organically through his character’s love of music and theater. (This scene is an excellent example, both because he’s being so dang adorable and because the bit player he’s singing to can’t keep a straight face.) However, High Fidelity is probably the filmic apex of that Black magic. Not only is Barry well-written, but given that he’s a pretty one-dimensional character, Black has the freedom to take him to the sublime heights of ridiculousness without losing the audience.

For all the side-eye I give fat character tropes on this blog, I do love when fat characters are vivacious agents of chaos. It’s both a subversion of fat = slow/lazy and an outright denial of respectability politics, a grab at hyper-visibility and confrontation that provides a vicarious thrill for a fat introvert like yours truly. Even if the institution doesn’t actually change once including someone like Jack Black or Rebel Wilson on the A-list, it feels good to see them win widespread recognition for playing a character who challenges everyone around them.

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